Owner of organic pub The Duke of Cambridge, Geetie Singh shares her delicious pasta recipe with StyleNest.
There are some dishes where making your own pasta is really worth it, this is one of them. It’s not as hard as one might think, it’s a dough with lots of rolling rather than kneading. The butternut squash and the buttery sage are a wonderful combination. Pasta dough freezes well, so you could double your quantities to make a different filling another time.
Serves: 4
Preparation time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 40 minutes
What you’ll need:
1.5kg butternut squash
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp salt and ground black pepper
2 tbsp chopped sage leave
60g (3tbsp) Parmesan, grated
200g rocket
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp walnut oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
20g butter
1 lemon, juiced
2 tbsp sage leaves
50g pumpkin seeds
salt and pepper
For the pasta dough
600g 00 flour
1 tsp salt
6 eggs
1 tbsp olive oil
What to do:
To make the pasta dough’ place the flour mixed with salt on a clean surface. Make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into a bowl, lightly whisk with a fork, and add olive oil. Put half the egg mix in the center of the flour well. Using your hands fold from the outer side of the flour into the egg. Add more egg mix as you go along. Now, knead by pushing the palm of your hands into the dough and folding together. Do this repeatedly for about 10 minutes; it develops the gluten in the dough.
Cut the dough in half and flatten it with your hand. Wrap the two halves separately in clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour. Meanwhile, make the filling. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas 6.
Wash and cut the butternut squash in half. Discard the seeds, cut into wedges about 2cm thick, leave the skin on. Place on a roasting tray and drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil and add crushed garlic. Season, and put it in the oven for about 30 minutes or until soft. Take out, allow to cool slightly, scoop the flesh off the skin into a bowl with a spoon, add the chopped sage and grated Parmesan and smash with a fork: leave it chunky. Add a further tablespoon of olive oil and season to taste.
Take the dough out of the fridge. A pasta machine is quickest for the next stage, but if you do not have one just use a rolling pin and roll the dough by hand. Place one piece of dough on a floured surface and dust. Flatten out with your hand. Put the pasta machine on thickest setting and roll the dough through the machine about four times. Do this by running it through once, folding over and rolling through again; repeat three times. Sprinkle with flour again. Move the setting to the next notch down and run through repeatedly until it is 1mm thick (roughly four times). Your strip should end up being roughly 2 meters long. Fold in half to find the middle and mark.
Place 1 tablespoonful of squash at even intervals, achieving eight blobs. Paint a strip of water in a square around each blob. Then fold the top sheet over the blobs and press down to glue along your watermark. Push the air gently out from the parcel, otherwise the ravioli will fill up with water while boiling. Cut evenly between filling leaving 1 cm of dough from edge to filling. Repeat the process with the second half of the dough.
In a saucepan, large enough for the ravioli to move around while cooking, bring about 4 litres of water to the boil, add 1 teaspoon of salt and when boiling, lower in the ravioli and cook for at least 10 minutes or until they float up to the surface.
Meanwhile wash, drain and dry the rocket. Whisk together the olive oil, walnut oil and red wine vinegar to make a dressing. Melt the butter in a frying pan, add the sage leaves, pumpkin seeds and lemon juice and sprinkle with salt. Allow the butter to froth; cook for 10-12 minutes. Remove the ravioli parcels with a slotted spoon and place on serving plate. Pour the butter and sage over plus lots of freshly ground pepper. Serve with rocket salad and walnut dressing.
Recipe taken from Geetie’s Cookbook: Recipes From The Kitchen of the Duke of Cambridge Organic Pub by Geetie Singh & Sara Berg
Read our review of the Duke of Cambridge here.